Rightwingers attack Cameron's celebrity 'A-list'

David Cameron faced the first direct challenge to his style of leadership yesterday when the rightwing Cornerstone group of Conservative MPs told him that hard-working local candidates, not his "A-list" of London celebrities, were the key to victories at the next election.

The Cornerstone group, which backed Mr Cameron rather than David Davis in the 2005 leadership contest, published a paper by David Burrowes, MP for Enfield Southgate, the seat he retook from Labour last year. Mr Burrowes, a Christian who believes in acting on Tory values in tough council estates, said national politics had become too remote and value-free for many voters.

His 8.7% swing was the result of a policy to "pick 'em local and pick 'em early", Cornerstone explained.

Without naming the 100 celebrities picked by the party HQ to contest winnable seats - who include the Coronation Street actor Adam Rickett, the novelist Louise Bagshawe, and the ecologist Zac Goldsmith - Cornerstone's chairman, John Hayes MP, made plain that he has them in his sights: "The idea that we can parachute insubstantial and untested candidates with little knowledge of the local scene into key seats to win the confidence of people they seek to represent is the bizarre theory of people who spend too much time with the pseuds and posers of London's chi-chi set and not enough time in normal Britain."

Mr Cameron can ignore such warnings while he is high in the polls. But his hopes of making inroads into cities outside London, especially in the north, were disappointed in the local elections. Mr Burrowes' "new localism" is shared by other Tory candidates successful in 2005.